The mornings in Dharampur began with dust, not sunlight. Ravi woke to the sound of clattering pots and his sister Meera's cough. Their house—if four walls of patched tin and wood could be called that—smelled of damp straw and boiled rice.
"Get up, Ravi," his mother said, setting down a steel plate with two flat rotis and a smear of onion chutney. "The station master needs you to carry sacks today. Don't be late."
Ravi rubbed his eyes and nodded. Every sack carried meant two rupees. Two rupees meant survival.
At the railway yard, the sacks were heavier than boys his age should lift. But Ravi wasn't just lifting grain—he was lifting the burden of a family, the hunger of his sister, the worry lines on his mother's face.
During a break, he sat with the older coolies, who smoked beedis and spoke of politics and cricket. Ravi listened but also calculated. He noticed how one man had slipped coins into his pocket while pretending to count wages for others. He noticed which traders always haggled, which ones paid promptly.
Money was not just money—it was movement, it was power, it was freedom.
That evening, while sweeping the floor of his mother's tea stall, Ravi whispered to Meera, "One day, I'll have so many coins that I won't have to count them."
Meera giggled. "And what will you do with them, bhaiya?"
"I'll make sure you never cough again."
The words hung in the smoky air of the tea stall, half dream, half promise.
But as Ravi would soon learn, dreams came with a price—and sometimes, that price was betrayal.